The Great American Democracy

Kudos to the American democratic processes, systems and institutions which, once again, unfailingly reinvented themselves by electing the best man, Barack Obama, till recently an obscure senator, to the most powerful position in the world, eschewing all extraneous considerations, for affectively answering the need of the times and to meet the “pressing urgency of now in the best interests of America”.
While we may shower praise on Obama’s elocutionary skills: his passionate ‘we can’ victory speech, his sincerity, courage of conviction and call for ‘change’, his victory was a tribute to the great American democracy. It is their system of democratic governance due to which the miracle happened in spite of the obvious disadvantages: being a black man, a half- Muslim with Hussein as a middle name, rumours of his early days addiction to drugs and association with grotty characters; a political minnow who apparently had no chance, even in the primaries, against Hillary Clinton.
Political analysts have celebrated this historic event of global significance by writing millions of words eulogizing America for its capacity to shake off the dark past for which Abraham Lincoln had made the supreme sacrifice. The Indian constituency of thinkers and political analysts, marveling over the Obama’s stupendous victory, can not help but crave for an early end of this dark period of insipid, spineless, thoroughly rotten and corrupt political leadership in their own country, yielding place to the inspiring and committed leadership.
Is it possible to user in the much coveted ‘change’ to ‘meet the pressing urgency of now in the best interests of India’ under the shadow of our grossly debased variety of Westminster type of Parliamentary democracy which was adopted in unseemly haste? The answer is an emphatic “NO”. For that to happen, we will have to switch over to the American-model of Presidential democracy. Nothing short of this is going to help. The sooner we adopted it, the better it would be for the health of our society and polity; our all round development and well-being. We will then have our own Lincolns and Obamas who are conspicuous by their absence in the present day India.
Even before more than 90% of our populace could know what was happening, “We The People of India” were made to adopt, enact and give to ourselves a Constitution, the good-intentioned provisions of which, when put to practice delivered just the opposite. For example, it was hoped that Executive would be de-linked from the Legislature to ensure clean and vibrant administration. Instead, the Executive has been reduced to the position of a handmaid of the Legislature. Not very infrequently calculated attempts are made, even to subvert the Judiciary and make it subservient to Legislature. Its independence is undermined. Judicial pronouncements and verdicts, whenever made in any case by the Hon’ble Supreme Courts and High Courts should be accorded the status of law of the land. We not only need a fiercely independent judiciary but also an independent Executive and Media.
Our system of elections and electioneering contributed substantially to the criminalization of the politics. It created the politics of vote-bank which in turn helped third rate demagogues with criminal background, who are long on rhetoric and dramatics and short on everything else, to ascend to powerful positions in the government by playing religion, caste and region card and pursuing quota-reservation policies with dogged determination to woo, cultivate and consolidate caste and minority vote-banks. Our corruption-ridden democratic system of governance and institutions are totally incapable of producing an Obama-like phenomenon in India. While we always want the best man to win an election, he simply dreads to run. No wonder, democracy in our country has degenerated into highly criminalized and corrupt ‘mobocracy’.

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI